The Shanghai Masters initially seemed like a good deal. I could tape it at 2:00 A.M. and get up and watch only what I wanted, or needed, to watch. But it turns out that there’s been a lot more of it than I bargained for so far, too much for one person to process and still remain gainfully employed. It’s difficult, once you see that, say, Rafael Nadal is playing live, to wind the DVR all the way back to the Djokovic-Ljubicic match from four hours earlier. And by the time I’d started taping, the match I was most interested in, the slackdown between Richard Gasquet and Ernests Gulbis, was over.
So I’ve picked my spots. Here are a few thoughts on what I’ve seen thus far.
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The Event
Last year I lamented the fact that the ATP had chosen to station their Asian Masters event in Shanghai rather than Tokyo. Japan also has a retractable roof, allowing for outdoor play, which is less wintry and thus less of a drag if a match is a clunker. More important, a higher percentage of the stands in Tokyo are full on any given day, which is a cheering sight. The roots of the sport go deeper in Japan, which makes it more transparent that the tour is in China for reasons of sponsorship interest rather than fan interest.
The same has largely been true this time around. Seats were full in Tokyo; seats are empty in Shanghai. But familiarity has begun to breed some fondness, and Shanghai does have its unique elements. The giggling fans, who plant themselves on the sidelines and aggressively gawk at the players, seem more charming than embarrassing this year. The sparse crowds, which are most noticeable on the outer courts, don’t bother me as much because I expect people to show up by the weekend, the way they did in 2009. And there was a sense of occasion for the late matches yesterday that befitted the two winners, Nadal and Roger Federer—Federer’s presence alone gives the event more life than it had last year, when he was absent. And it’s true, seeing that Rolex is a sponsor doesn’t hurt.
Novak Djokovic
Suddenly, after three years of volatility, of unpredictable ups and downs, of ebbs and flows from match to match and set to set, he looks calm. A lost point doesn’t seem to lead to the same anxiety and frustration that it did as little as a few months ago. A lost game doesn’t lead to the heavy breathing and the smashed racquet. From what I’ve seen of Djokovic in Beijing and so far in Shanghai, he’s letting his superior athleticism do the talking. He’s getting out of his own way, which can only lead to good things for a guy with his skills and gifts. We’ll see if it lasts; he’s been known to go off the boil just when you think he has it together. But maybe his Open performance, where he proved to himself for the first time in a while that he still has a place at the top, has put his mind at ease.
Rafael Nadal
Stan Wawrinka will beat Rafa someday, but it will never be a good matchup for him. His one-handed backhand, normally a strength, is a liability against Nadal, which means that his forehand must be that much better than it usually is. When he goes big with it, he has to connect, but that in turn puts extra pressure on that stroke.
Nadal’s serve was strong again, even if he had just two aces. That he can bring the heat more regularly and accurately down the T means that his wide one into the ad court is more effective. His opponents can’t sit on it quite as often. But the highlight of his match came in a return game. At 3-3, 15-40 in the second set, with a victory within tasting range, Nadal played an exemplary point at an anxious moment. Wawrinka had been missing, so Nadal put a little more air under his shots and played them a little more safely. But safe doesn’t have to mean tentative; it doesn’t have to mean that you just hope the other guy misses; it doesn’t mean that you push. Nadal moved the ball around and didn’t hit the same shot twice. He didn’t go for the corners but he did hit the ball firmly, trying for weight of shot rather than velocity. And, hitting progressively sharper crosscourt forehands, he forced Wawrinka to move along the baseline. Yes, Nadal won the point on a Wawrinka error. But if there's such a thing as an “earned error," this would have qualified.
Roger Federer
John Isner donated a double-fault that helped get him broken and begin his downfall. But Federer was sharp enough, even after the time off, to capitalize on that double fault by jumping on a forehand two points later to break. Federer played a smart match, forcing Isner to move to his right, which has always been his biggest weakness, and blocking back as many serves as could be expected.
What do we miss when Federer isn’t around? What will we miss when he isn’t around in the future? From this match, I would say it will be his friendliness and sense of camarederie. After one long, weird point, Isner missed a volley badly. Federer looked at him with a smile, as if expecting one in return. In practice, any two players would share a smile after a wacky point like the one they’d just played. But not many players would do it during a match. It’s true that Federer was smiling after a point that he had won, and that he probably would have had a different reaction if he’d lost it. Still, that doesn’t make it any less enjoyable to see. Greatness doesn’t have to come with an imperious manner; it can be friendly, too.
The Broadcast
I like the Gael Monfils K-Swiss ad. I don’t know what Lindt’s is. I’m not a fan of tennis resorts, but the grass court in the Destination Tennis spot looks tempting. I’m way more aware than I need to be that Justin Gimelstob is running the New York City marathon.
As for the announcing, Robbie Koenig and Jason Goodall have come to seem, if not like friends, at least like barroom mates who happen to know a lot about tennis rather than the NFL. But let me take (small) issue with a few descriptions that were thrown out this morning. When Federer walked his casual walk to the sideline up 4-1 in the first, he didn’t seem to me to be, as Goodall dramatically asserted, “firing a shot across the bow of the players in the locker room.” And later, after Federer smiled the smile I mentioned above and again walked pleasantly to the sideline, I didn’t sense, as Goodall did, that he was “refuuuusing to be trifled with.” And while the Chinese fans were happy and impressed when they saw Federer hit his now-trademark tweener, I would not have described them, as Goodall did, as “deleeerious with delight.”
Those are minor issues, though, water under the bridge among barroom tennis aficionados—those people are too few and far between to take for granted or quibble with for too long. I’ll be happy to hang with them again tomorrow morning.